


... Leading the Blind

by CatLovePower



Category: Preacher (TV)
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, episode tag: s01e01
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-17
Updated: 2016-06-17
Packaged: 2018-07-15 16:34:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7230181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CatLovePower/pseuds/CatLovePower
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Short tag to the end of episode 1. What happened during those three days Jesse was unconscious.</p>
            </blockquote>





	... Leading the Blind

Cassidy didn't even know why he walked all the way to this god-awful church in the frigging middle of nowhere Texas after they finally released him from prison. It wasn’t as hot and dusty as it was when he first “landed”. It felt like a nice late night stroll, but he didn’t know what to expect at the end. A closed door? Booze and a new friend? A place to lay low and wait for the zealous assassins to forget about him? (As if that was going to happen anytime soon…)

The church sign read “You can’t enter heaven unless Jesus enters you”, and that made him chuckle. The building sat in the middle of a field, crowned by the moon. He pushed the heavy doors, peeked inside the building, dark and quiet. There were no supernatural laws preventing vampires to step through a door uninvited, but Cassidy was wary of the preacher. He'd seen what he could do in a fight, and that was beautiful. Weird animal, that guy.

When he finally entered, he was greeted with a puzzling sight. The pews were askew (wow, try saying that quickly), as if someone got really mad in the middle of the church. And then he found the preacher, passed out in front of the altar. Snoring lightly. So, he couldn’t handle his booze, Cassidy thought. It felt like a letdown, for some reason. The vampire looked for whatever he'd been drinking, then sat in one of the front pews, slightly dejected that he had found no bottle.

Thirst. What a terrible feeling. The scrawny vampire threw another look at the man asleep on the floor. He saw him as a piece of meat, all of a sudden. Living meat. Cassidy stayed silent for a moment, observing the way the ribcage rose up with each shallow breath. That slight throb of the carotid artery against a too-tight collar. He looked uncomfortable on the floor, like a discarded puppet whose strings had been cut off. Was it hot in here? He looked hot, in his dark suit. Maybe... Maybe he'd be better in a bed. Cassidy stopped jittering and breathed through his nose, aware that even his thoughts had double entendre. Why was he here again?

The preacher – Jesse, Jesse something – turned out to be heavier than he looked. How could such a diminutive man weight so much; it must be all that bottled-up anger, Cassidy thought as he heaved the preacher from the floor. He looked flush, heat radiating from his whole body, seeping through his clothes and into Cassidy's shoulder. It was a weirdly alluring fever. As if there was something really wrong with him, and in the meantime everything was where it should be. Proinsias Cassidy, Irish vampire, in a Texan preacher's bedroom. Manhandling him out of his damp clothes, soothing and cooing the best he could. He wasn't known for his maternal instinct.

There were several bottles on the night stand, more of that awful local whiskey that sure would have given him a headache in the morning, provided he was still human. He quenched one thirst, unable to act on the others, the more sinful ones. His new friend was still soundly asleep, black eye and all. So Cassidy lay on the other side of the bed and waited for the sunrise to come with a weird sense of domesticity.

 

 

At dawn, they were both asleep. Insistent coughing woke Cassidy up. He was cuddling against the preacher’s naked thigh. A woman stood there, frozen in the threshold, looking simultaneously pissed off and resigned. Maybe that sort of thing happened on a regular basis around here. Jesse was a strange man after all.

"Hello there!" Cassidy said, bed hair sticking in all directions, propped up on a bony elbow. Then he retrieved the bottle of whiskey, lost in the bed sheets and took a sip.

The small woman didn’t answer. She unfolded her arms, wrinkled her nose and went to open the window. Cassidy rolled off the bed with a strangled yelp when she drew the curtains, letting the morning sun - deadly, deadly sun - flood the room.

"I'll be on me way then, you maniac..." he grumbled, looking for his shoes under the bed, and a shirt that wasn't his.

"What's wrong with him?" the woman asked. Cassidy carefully peeked at her from the shadowy side of the room. She was leaning over the bed, feeling Jesse's feverish brow with the back of her hand, looking very much like a mum.

"Dunno, bad whiskey?" Cassidy suggested, feeling quite out of place under the missy's glare.

"You smell like a brewery; he doesn't. Well, less than usual." (Cassidy also smelled like death, but humans wouldn't be able to sense it.)

"He had his bell rung..." (And then he managed to royally beat the shit out of a gang of thugs single handedly.)

"He got in a fight," the woman sighed. That wasn't even a question, as if that had to be expected.

"Actually, he was fine," Cassidy explained. (Did he need to talk about their short visit of the local prison?) "Until… he wasn’t," he concluded rather lamely. "I found him like that, not my fault!" He raised his hands, see, not guilty.

He finished getting dressed, wondering how he was supposed to get out, since the church was in the middle of nowhere in sunny Texas. Maybe they had an umbrella lying around somewhere. (Because that worked so well last time…)

"Could you get some ice in the freezer?" the young woman asked, very politely, without taking her eyes of Jesse. "If it’s still working, that is…"

Cassidy backed out of the room, looking for the kitchen, while she was mumbling about the damn air conditioning.

 

 

Much later, when Jesse finally came around, Cassidy was (still) fixing the air-conditioner (not much luck so far), and Emily didn’t know more about the Irishman than that Jesse and him were "mates", as if that explained everything. And soon after, it proved not to be a lie, after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry for that... thing. I wanted to write a tag, realized halfway that I had no idea how to make an Irishman talk/think, and that I didn't know enough about the series to really write something good.


End file.
